And so like gods to Ilium they came Attended by the people’s wild acclaim, Nor knew that even then across the sea Sailed swift Achilles, born their bane to be: To drag dead Hector round the walls of Troy, And doom to slavery his wife and boy. (MARION MILLS MILLER) I do not feel that this poem was cold and superficial as Miss De Courten and some other critics say, for to me it is a dignified and simple epic narrative, like the messengers’ speeches in Greek tragedy, introduced into the midst of lyrics. It is almost perfect and well worthy of Sappho. It makes us realize that Sappho’s activity was broader than we had supposed and brings her nearer to her predecessors and successors. It is a unique example, hitherto unknown, of a lyric narrative with epic intonations, throwing new light on the history of the ancient wedding-songs.[96] A rhetorician of the fourth century A.D., Himerius,[97] has an interesting passage which bears on Sappho’s wedding-songs and helps us interpret the fragments which are preserved: “So it is time for us, my children, since we are summoning our Muses to marriage-dance and marriage-love, to relax the graveness of our music, so that we may the better trip it with the maidens in honour of Aphrodite. How hard it is to find a tune gentle enough to please the Goddess, we may judge from the poets themselves, most of whom, though past masters in love-poetry, went as bravely to the description of Hera as any boy or girl, but when it came to the rites of Aphrodite, left the song for the lyre and the making of the epithalamy entirely to Sappho, who when the contests are over enters the chamber, weaves the bower, makes the bride-bed, gathers the maidens into the bride-chamber, and brings Aphrodite in her Grace-drawn car with a bevy of Loves to be her playfellows; and her she adorns with hyacinths about the hair, leaving all but what is parted by the brow to float free upon the wayward breeze, and them she decks with gold on wing and tress and makes to go on before the car and wave their torches on high.” (EDMONDS)